Hyderabad: When Vikram-1 thundered into orbit from ISRO’s First Launch Pad at Sriharikota on Saturday under Mission Aagaman, it carried more than satellites and technology payloads. It marked the arrival of India’s private launch industry on the global stage and crowned a journey that began with a bold idea in Hyderabad eight years ago.Behind the historic mission are Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharat Daka, two former ISRO engineers from Andhra Pradesh who left secure govt careers to build Skyroot Aerospace—India’s first private rocket company and the country’s first space-tech unicorn.Chandana, who grew up in Visakhapatnam, discovered his passion for rocketry at IIT Kharagpur, where he completed a dual degree in mechanical engineering and thermal science in 2012.At ISRO, he worked on the GSLV Mk-III, now LVM3, as a systems engineer for the S200 solid rocket booster before becoming deputy project manager for the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV). The assignments gave him first-hand experience in launch vehicle development and earned him two innovation awards.Daka followed a different path through IIT Madras, where he completed a dual degree in electrical engineering and microelectronics and VLSI design. At ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, he developed hardware and firmware for onboard computers responsible for sequencing, navigation, guidance and control—the electronic brain of a launch vehicle. A subsequent stint at Xilinx strengthened his expertise in advanced electronics and scalable engineering.Colleagues to co-foundersThe two engineers became colleagues, friends and flatmates at ISRO. Watching private launch companies flourish overseas, they recognised a gap at home: India had world-class space talent but almost no private launch ecosystem.In 2018, before policy reforms and venture funding for space startups gathered momentum, they founded Skyroot Aerospace in Hyderabad with the ambitious goal of building globally competitive launch vehicles.The milestones came quickly. In 2020, Skyroot conducted India’s first private rocket engine static test. A year later, it test-fired the country’s first privately developed cryogenic engine. In 2022, Vikram-S, launched under Mission Prarambh, became the first privately built Indian rocket to reach space on its maiden attempt, validating the company’s technology and laying the foundation for an orbital mission.That journey culminated on July 18, 2026, when Vikram-1 successfully reached orbit under Mission Aagaman, making Skyroot the first private Indian company to achieve an orbital launch and marking a defining milestone for the country’s commercial space ambitions.Today, Chandana leads the company’s vision, launch vehicle development and strategy, while Daka oversees avionics, guidance, navigation, mission operations and programme execution as Skyroot prepares for its next phase—transforming a successful demonstration into a sustained commercial launch business.
